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SPEECH '^^J«s??j 

HON. WILLIAM B. EEED, 

ow 

THE PRESIDENTIAL aUESTION. 



DELITBRED BEFORE THE 



NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC ASSOCIATION. 
Philadelphia, September 4, 1860. 



IS 



THE PRESIDENTIAL QUESTION. 

Fellow-Citizens : — 

I learn that one of the newspapers which favours the election of Mr. Lin 
coin, has lately uttered a sort of challenge, or taunt, or conjecture, as to the 
silence, thus far, of those whom it calls the ''Breckinridge leaders" in this 
city, and that I am, by name, appealed to as one of them. While I dis- 
claim any such distinction, I have no disposition to conceal my opinions; 
and have come here to-night so far to repel the taunt as to try to show 
in a few precise, and, I hope, inoffensive words, why I think, and wish 
others to think, especially the citizens of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, 
that it will conduce to our social and political well-being, and tp our mate- 
rial interests — to which none are insensible — that Mr. Breckinridge should 
be elected President. I do not come to counsel, for I have no right to do 
so; but I have some practical suggestions to make, which, I trust, may be 
listened to. 

In a political atmosphere, heated as ours is, it is difficult to speak without 
offence ; but I shall endeavour to do so. The danger just now don't seem to 
be of talking unkindly of our legitimate adversaries. It is in another direc- 
tion ; and in that direction, if possible, I do not mean to be led or driven. 
I have no words of offence to utter, and I regret that others have, a,s to 
Judge Douglas. My personal relations to him and his, though very slight, 
have always been friendly and respectful. I was absent from the country, 
too far away to be reached by the asperities of our politics when those 
difficulties occurred which seem to have alienated Mr. Douglas from the 
Democratic party. I listened to his last and most elaborate speech in the 
Senate in vindication of his opinions, if without conviction, certainly with 
interest. But here in candour I am obliged to stop ; for when I see the 
course of his organ here, and of many of his friends, — when I read their 
bitter vituperation (for the word is not too strong) of all who differ from 

them, when I see that they have imported speakers as if for the special 

purpose of defaming Pennsylvania men, — when the President, in one speech, 
is likened to Tiberius, and his approaching retirement compared with the 
infamies of Caprete ; and in another (I refer to a revised report of Mr. 
Foote's late speech at Harrisburg), the Attorney-General of the_ United 
States, a man against whose private and public character no whisper of 
reproach was ever uttered, is denounced by name, — when such men, our 
own fellow-citizens, are thus, in violation of common decency, defamed_ by 
Judge Douglas's leading friends, I beg to be excused from the association, 
or for thinking any political end of value enough to be gained or sought by 
such means. 

Our other friends or adversaries — for I really hardly know which to call 
them — across the street, the Bell and Everett men, are entitled to great 
consideration. Theirs is the unquestioned liierit that they claim to be, in 
organization, in aim, and in policy, national. No more national men live 
than Mr. lugersoll, who is a recognized leader here, and Judge King, and 
Mr. Fuller. I have been too long a reader of Whig newspapers not to do 
justice to John Bell. Mr. Everett's record is that of a thoroughly national 
man. Years ago, in 1826, he said in a speech in Congress, that in the event 
of a servile insurrection, though no soldier, he would shoulder his musket 
and fight for the rights of the South ; and for this sentiment he has been 
the mark of Abolition ribaldry ever since. Mr. Crittenden voted in the 
Senate for Mr. Davis's resolutions on the territorial question, which is the 
Breckinridge platform. Towards these gentlemen, and their principles,_so 
far as they have been made known, we all have a respectful feeling, which 

1* 



I should be sorry to have checked by foolish letters or foolish speeches, 
imputing sectionalism to Mr. Breckinridge. They know better. Such de- 
famation is not worthy the lips of gentlemen and men of sense. 

"We have no bids to make to the Bell and Everett party. We don't insult 
them by threats. Had it not been for the division that has been created in the 
Democratic ranks, we might have seen, before this, a great conservative com- 
bination, which would have wrested even New England from its thraldom, 
and struck Abolition a triumphant blow, even in its heart of Massachusetts. 
The " solid men of Boston," to whom Mr. Seward made his recent appeal, are 
national men. They were Mr. Webster's friends when Mr. Seward opposed 
him. They are Mr. Everett's friends now, when Mr. Seward conies, and 
almost within earshot of Mr. Everett's house, defies him. I believe the national 
sentiment of the country will yet awaken to the necessity of combined and 
effective action. How, or by what means, I do not pretend to say. It may 
be at the last moment, — it may be on the very edge of the final contest. 
No one ought to say a word to render it impossible. No one ought to be 
restless and fidgety in promoting it. If it does happen, depend on it, a 
great element of its successful action will be the organized Democracy of 
Pennsylvania, — the friends in every county of Breckinridge and Lane. Its 
integrity must be respected. It will be time enough when, by the sponta- 
neous co-operation of patriotic men throughout the commonwealth, Mr. 
Foster shall be elected Governor, as he easily can be. 

So much for side issues, which I am sorry to have to talk about, but 
which it would be mere affectation to ignore. Now, for the common enemy. 
Of Mr. Lincoln, whose election I consider full of threatened evil to the 
Union and to Pennsylvania, I have no reason to speak, but with due per- 
sonal consideration. It is very much in his favour that he was nominated 
at Chicago and is now recommended to the people, as a concession to the 
moderation of the country, and that his nomination was effected by the 
revolt of Pennsylvania against the dictation of New York. The New York 
politicians pooh-poohed Pennsylvania candidates, and Pennsylvania plucked 
up spirit enough to punish New York by nominating Mr. Lincoln, and then 
New York returned the compliment, by giving us a free-trade, free-soil 
Vice-President in Mr. "Hamlin. Whether Pennsylvania will be further 
punished in the long run, for her independence, I do not pretend to say. 
Time, in fact, can only determine, whether, for what she dared to do, Penn- 
sylvania is to be so rewarded or so insulted, but I confess I like Mr. 
Lincoln all the better, because at this risk, he was the nominee of Pennsyl- 
vania. 1 am quite aware that another solution has been given to this result, 
and that high authority may be cited to show that Mr. Seward was defeated 
for other reasons than his unpopularity in Pennsylvania. In the "New 
York Evening Post" of May 23, edited by Mr. Bryant, now a Republican 
elector, 1 find this passage : — 

"But there was another cause of Mr. Seward's failure, which does not appear from any 
part of the proceedings of the Convention, and which yet was more potent than any other. 
It deserve.s to be plainly stated for the instruction of men in public life. Mr. Seward lost 
the nomination through the misconduct of some of his warmest and oldest friends. Our 
readers are not now to hear for the first time of the shamelessly corrupt conduct of the New 
York Legislature, both during the past winter and the winter previous, with a Republican 
majority in both branches. Nothing could have happened more injurious to the prospects 
of Mr. Seward than the almost open venality on one side and no less shameless subornation 
of venality on the other among many of those who claimed to be the mo.«t zealous political 
friends of Mr. Seward. Thousands of men who were friendly to Mr. Seward's nomination 
a year since were thrown into the utmost consternation by these enormities, and asked 
whether, in case of Mr. Seward's election to the Presidency, all this corruption was to be 
transferred to Washington. His person.al integrity they did not allow themselves to 
question, but they felt the strongest distrust, to use the mildest term, of those who were 
to go into office with him. To the strength of this feeling, and to its contagion, spreading 



beyond the State, Mr. Seward's failure is owing. Had our legislature but conducted itself 
with ordinary propriety during the two last winters, he would have been at this moment 
the Republican candidate for the Presidency."' 

All this may be so, but I am content with the other rea.son. Either is 
quite enough. 

But grave objections to Mr. Lincoln have been revealed since his nomi- 
nation, to which, without personal disparagement, I beg leave to call your 
attention. Since the Convention at Chicago, Mr. Lincoln, with one excep- 
tion, has maintained a resolute and prudent silence. The discussion with 
Judge Douglas in their canvass was characterized on his part by frankness 
and ability, and in the presence of a wary antagonist ready to take advan- 
tage of any indiscretion, by moderation. Little more than a year ago he 
wrote a letter, in which he was betrayed into language, which, though not 
very precise, and a little ambitious, was ominous. It was this: "This is 
a world of compensations, and he who would be no slave, must consent to 
have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for them- 
selves, and under a just God, cannot long retain it." It is not easy to say 
what this means, but it has an ugly look. Since his nomination, Mr. 
Lincoln has spoken once, and once too often. I refer to his speech at 
Springfield, about four weeks ago, which was the more significant, as he 
appears to have been taken by surprise, and to have spoken out, under an 
impulse, his inner thoughts. There is, I believe, a religious sect, called 
" Progressive Friends," — so, in politics, there are progressive Republicans, 
and to this class it would seem Mr. Lincoln belongs. I infer this from his 
speech, which cither means this, or means nothing. His language was : 
"My friends, you will fight for this cause, four years hence, as you now 
fight for it, and even stromjer than you now fight for it, though I may be 
dead and gone." Now, in all candour, I ask, what does this mean ? — what 
does Mr. Lincoln mean by an adjourned or continued conflict, by his 
"stronger fight" hereafter. Does it mean there is to be no repose, no 
settlement, no finality, under his administration? The " fight" is to go on — 
nay, it is to be " stronger" then than now. Not content with the victory 
of a compact North, over the stricken and insulted South, the arms are not 
to be laid aside, — the array is not to be broken, — the entrenched camp is 
not to be dismantled, — peace and conciliation are not even hinted at. Do- 
mestic slavery, driven by a triumphant executive and congressional majority, 
from the territories, is to be beleaguered in the States. It is to exist by 
sufferance, — it is to be destroyed by compression, and the varnished, plausi- 
ble, and deceptive Republicanism of ISGO is to become the aggressive Abo- 
litionism of 1864. So says Mr. Lincoln, if his language has any meaning, 
or be anything but the clumsiest rhetoric. 

Such was the utterance — no doubt the unguarded and genuine utterance, 
in the West, at Springfield, Mr. Lincoln's home, on the 9th of last month, 
August. This was, if I mistake not, on the Thursday of one week, on 
which day, or thereabouts, Mr. Seward sets out to look after Judge Douglas, 
in New England, and arrived in Boston, on Monday the 13th, and then and 
there, as I have said, close to Edward Everett's home, as if in insult and 
defiance, he reproduces his doctrine of " irrepressible conflict," ipsissimis 
verbis, and adds with emphasis — speaking I fear by authority — (I quote his 
very words), "Abraham Lincoln confesses his obligation to the higher law, 
which the Sage of Quincy proclaimed, and avows himself for weal or for 
woe, life or death, a soldier on the side of freedom, in the irrepressible con- 
flict between freedom and slavery." This is plain language. This is not 
careless or clumsy rhetoric, to which Mi*. Seward is not addicted. He always 
carefully elaborates. 



Thus speaks Mr. Lincoln for himself at one end of the line, and thus speaks 
Mr. Seward for him at the other; and I beg you to observe, so startling was 
this development of the animating spirit, the true design of the Republican 
party, that the leading organs of Mr. Lincoln in this city, who are busily en- 
gaged in seducing " the solid men" of Philadelphia into the belief that he 
and his party are not agitators of this slavery question, have never ventured 
to publish Mr. Seward's recent speeches. Not that they are very punctilious 
either; for, about the time when Mr. Lincoln was making what looked very 
much like an Abolition speech in Illinois, and Mr. Seward two or three in 
New England, there appeared in the ablest and least radical of the Repub- 
lican newspapers of this city, a translation, in the form of an editorial arti- 
cle, of Victor Hugo's pamphlet on Italy, in which John Brown is canonized 
by name, as a proto-raartyr, the action of the law in Virginia is denounced 
as "infamous," America is stigmatized as "leaning to darkness," and "the 
negro is bid to hope." I am quite aware that the editor, who tries his best 
to be a conservative man, was absent when the railing of this crazy French- 
man was reproduced — but it did appear; was read by thousands; was added 
to the stock of wretched literature which has anti-slavery for its basis, and 
gladdened the hearts of those who, with Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward and 
Mr. Sumner, look forward to the good time of the " irrepressible conflict," 
"the stronger fight," when, to use Mr. Seward's words in another connec- 
tion, "the banner will be unfurled with safety in the slave States." Lord 
Brougham and Victor Hugo, an English and a French Abolitionist, insult 
us at the same time. The New York Tribune thinks Lord Brougham did 
M'hat was right, and the Lincoln papers of Philadelphia reproduce the 
ravings of the French enthusiast, with the faintest possible expression of 
dissent. 

When in 1855, Mr. Sumner made his anti-slavery harangue in the Senate, 
the public mind revolted at it, and nothing but the act of violence which it 
provoked saved it from universal condemnation. Now, in 1860, he makes 
a much worse speech, more defamatory, more acrimonious, more grotesquely 
malignant, and Republican senators listen with contentment, and Mr. Sum- 
ner has an ovation in the city of New York, where, amidst bright eyes, 
dimmed only by tears of sympathy, and tumultuous cheers, he makes a 
speech for the Republican candidate, worse than any he ever uttered ; and 
Wendell Phillips preaches aggressive abolition in Philadelphia, and I\Ir. 
Curtis, a leading delegate at Chicago, has to be protected by the strong hand 
of the law, as he invokes sympathy for those who would have been glad to 
make a new Cawnpore on the banks of the Potomac. Mr. Sumner's last 
triumph is the nomination of a " Radical Republican" as Governor of 
Massachusetts. 

Nay, further, I hold in my hand a book published in New York, and 
called the "Republican Campaign Hand-Book," an authoritative exposition 
of doctrines, north of a certain parallel, and I find its moral to be in so 
many words, that Lincoln's election is but a step in the march of " pro- 
gressive humanity," leading to the grand triumph of emancipation every- 
where. Its language is : — 

"The people of those States where liberty is not stifled by cowardly and brutal force, 
have it in their power to insure political jeforni, and save the grand expanse of territory, 
of over one thousand million of acres in the West, from the wreck and shame of slavery. 
This they can do constitutionally, without infringing upon Southern privileges ; and by so 
restricting the evil, and saving further laud from its devastations, the.y will lead the way 
lo yet hi glttr achievements. Other nations beckon us on: England, her House of Lords 
roused by the memorable logic and eloquence of a Brougham, struck the chains off all her 
slaves, aud each rising and setting sun does homage to the majesty of the achievement, 
over the hills and vales of her happy islands, liussia, with twenty million serfs, is, at the 
fiat of her best Emperor, about to touch them with the Ithuriel spear of emancipation, 'So 



that their moral nature may reach the skies. Shall we, then, with such glorious examples 
of the good, the generous, and the right, retroact, absolve ourselves from our gallant past^ 
cut off our brilliant future, and be stifled in essential barbarism? In this epoch, when 
science flies on the wings of love, can we sanction the worship of hate and cruelty?' This 
and not less than this, is contained in the solution of the great questions before us. We 
Lave either to succumb to, or to triiiviph over, the slave power. There is no middle course. 
We must either have the black flag of slavery, or one scintillating with freedom, to sym- 
bolize our home and country. Our irreversible word, then, should^be for Liberty— circling 
our lakes and seas ; traversing our mountains and prairies ; covering our cities and villages : 
going forth in many ships over many waters : liberty for the poor, the exiled, and the op- 
pressed ; liberty of sense and soul, of thought and speech, of aspiration and action." 

And further still, a great element of the supposed Republican strength 
in the Northwestern States, is that of the German Abolitionists. They 
were a recognized power at Chicago. They are a recognized power in the 
canvass; and freed from tbe restraints which habits of early trainino- and 
education impose, speak out boldly. Their leader is. an individual named 
Carl Shurz (who was a delegate I believe at Chicago), and in his speech 
delivered a few days ago at St. Louis, and republished in the Republican 
journals with high praise, I find the following, which I quote without com- 
ment, begging the moderate Republicans of this vicinage to meditate on it, 
and see whither they are being led : — 

"Look around you and see how lonesome you are in this wide world of ours. As far as 
modern civilization throws its rays, what people, what class of society, is there like you? 
Cry out into the world your wild and guilty fantasy of property in man, and every echo 
responds with a cry of horror or contempt ; every breeze, from whatever point of the com- 
pass it may come, brings you a verdict of condemnation. There is no human heart that 
sympathizes with your cause, unless it sympathizes with the cause of despotism in every 
form. There is no human voice to cheer you on in your struggle ; there is no human eye 
that has a tear for your reverses ; no link of sympathy between the common cause of the 
great human brotherhood and you. You hear of emancipation in Russia, and wish it should 
fail. You hear of Italy rising, and fear the spirit of liberty should become contagious. 
Where all mankind rejoices you tremble. Where all mankind love you hate. Where all 
mankind curses you sympathize. 

"And in this appalling solitude you stand alone against a powerful world, alone against 
a great ceritury, fighting, hopeless as the struggle of the Indians, against the onward march 
of civilization. Use all the devices which the inventive genius of despotism may suggest, 
and yet how can you resist? In every little village school-house, the little children who 
learn to read and write are plotting against you; in every laboratory of science, in every 
machine-shop, the human mind is working the destruction of your idol. You cannot make 
an attempt to keep pace with the general progress of mankind without plotting against 
yourselves. Every steam-whistle, every puffing locomotive, is sounding the shriek of lib- 
erty into your ears. From the noblest instincts of our hearts down to the sordid greediness 
of gain, every impulse of human nature is engaged in this universal conspiracy. How can 
you resist ? Where are your friends in the North ? Your ever-ready supporters are scat- 
tered to the winds, as by enchantment, never to unite again. Hear them, trying to save 
their own fortunes, swear with treacherous eagerness that they have nothing in common 
with you. And your opponents? Your boasts have lost their charm, your threats have 
lost their terrors upon them. The attempt is idle to cloak the sores of Lazarus with the 
lion skin of Hercules. We know you. Every one of your boasts is understood as a dis- 
guised moan of weakness — every shout of defiance as a disguised cry for mercy. That game 
is played out. Do not deceive yourselves. This means not only the destruction of a party 
— this means the defeat of a cause. Be shrewder than the shrewdest, braver than the 
bravest — it is all in vain ; your cause is doomed. 

" And in the face of all this, you insist upon hugging, with dogged stubbornness, your 
fatal infatuation. Why not, tvitk munly boldness, su-ing round into tlie grand march of 
progressive humanity ? You say it cannot be done to-day. Can it be done to-morrow ? 
Will it be easier twenty, fifty years hence, when the fearful increase of the negro popula- ■ 
tion will have aggravated the evils of slavery an hundredfold, and with it the difiiculties 
of extinction ? Did you ever think of this ? The final crisis will come, u-ith the inexo- 
rable certainty of fate, the more terrible the longer it is delayed. AVill you content your- 
selves with the criminal words, ' After me the deluge?' Is that the inheritance you mean 
to leave to coming generations ? an inheritance of disgrace, crime, blood, destruction ? 
Hear me, slaveholders of America I If you have no sense of right, no appreciation of your 
own interests, I entreat, I implore you, 'have at least pity for your children ! 

"I hear the silly objection, that your sense of honour forbids you to desert your cause. 
Sense of honour ! Imagine a future generation standing round the tombstone of the bravest 
of you, and reading the inscription : ' Here lies a gallant man, who lived and died true to 
the cause — of human slavery.' What will the verdict be? His very progeny will disown 



8 

him, and exclaim, ' He must have been either a knave or a fool!' There is not one of 
you irjio, if lie coxdd rise fruni. the dead a century hence, vould not gladly excliange his 
ejuta^jh for that of the meatiest of those tcho tvere hung at Charlestown.'''' 

Surely, my fellow-citizcus, in all this there is startling progress. When, 
in 185G, iMr. Seward made his Rochester speech, he soon felt he had gone 
too far at that date, and, if my memory does not deceive me, tried to ex- 
plain it away. In his speech last winter in the Senate his offensive doctrines 
were clothed in the rhetorical dress of "capital" and " labour j" but now 
this thin disguise is thrown away. He revives his ancient "irrepressible" 
theory boldly and defiantly, as if he were proud of his phrases. He goes 
to Bangor, and in compliment to lih Vice-President, talks to the Maine 
fislicruien of their superiority to cotton-planters and sugar-growers, and their 
uot being governed by the " slave-owner's lash," — and thence to Boston, 
and, in the m'idst of its national men, the Everetts, and Winthrops, and 
Appletous, and Hillards, and Curtis's, and Lunts, insults the South by a 
new war-cry of defiance. There is, I say, progress in this; and Mr. Lin- 
coln, with the certainty, as his friends claim, of triumph swelling in his 
heart, starts from his seclusion, and tells us that all this is nothing to what 
is to be by and-by — "the prologue to the swelling act" of the great theme 
hereafter — as Wendell Phillips honestly said, " the entering wedge, to be 
driven home," the skirmish before the " stronger fight ;" in short, but the 
beginning of the end of slavery as an institution anywhere. 

It was in the same speech Mr. Seward intimated, that one of the great 
results of a Republican triumph would be that the President should send 
abroad, as the diplomatic representatives of the country, individuals who, 
unlike those who for many years have filled these posts, would concur iu 
the general sentiment of reprobation of slavery all over the civilized world; 
in other words, those who would relish Lord Brougham's sneers, and Vic- 
tor Hugo's insults, and take into close communion, on terms of social 
equality, any negro who might have the advantage of such sponsors. Now, 
with some opportunities of observation, I must be permitted to say that no 
such state of feeling or action exists as the Republican leader supposes. It 
seems to me that our representatives abroad, so far as I met them, found 
other things to do, or think, or talk about, than slavery, or anti-slavery. As 
a general rule, they are silent on the subject; and it will be an evil day 
when this silence is broken, and the traveller from South Carolina or Georgia 
finds his ambassador an Abolition propagandist. Such, we are told, they 
are to be. But, gentlemen, in this connection I have one other experience 
which was most painful. Coming from the extreme East, where it. was my 
misfortune to find too few of my countrymen, and approaching those lines 
of travel where the rich and the idle, and the cultivated Americans are 
found in great numbers, I looked to meet that sympathy with the spirit 
of our institutions which nothing more intensifies than a long exile such as 
mine. Instead of which, the sentiment I encountered among my country- 
men — many of the most intelligent and accomplished (generally, I admit, 
from one section of the United States) — was one I can only describe as dis- 
loyalty, the perverse sentimentalism which is the living spirit of this anti- 
slavery excitement — a sublimated sort of morality — an aesthetic commu- 
nion with the unreal and morbid incongruity with the real. Americans, 
who should have loved their country, and revered its Constitution, and 
resented insults, to its constituted authorities, I found hostile, and disloyal, 
and defamatory; and the one cry was, sympathy with virtue-proud Eng- 
land, — virtue-proud on this subject mainly, and antagonism to home, so 
long as slavery was a recognized institution among us. Of course there 
were exceptions — numerous exceptions — and among them 1 recall one, the 



9 

most brilliant of American writers, from whose lips or whose pen no word 
of disloyalty, that I am aware of, ever fell, — who loves his country as 
it is, with or without slavery, — and who, unlike Abolition agitators, in his 
last wonderful work of genius, has spoken of his own dear native land as 
one where " no [jloomy wrong exists." But most else was sad disloyalty 
and disaffection, to be increased a thousand-fold when Governor Seward's 
day of promise dawns, and we are to have abroad diplomatic detractors of 
our domestic institutions, — panegyrists of that great scheme of hypocritical 
philanthropy which emanates from Exeter Hall, — sympathizers of Lord 
Brougham and Victor Hugo. 

I am not, I think, overstating this. I have no disposition to misconstrue 
either what Mr. Lincoln or Mr. Seward, or Mr. Sumner, or any one else has 
said, but I ask any candid friend of either, to take the aggregate speech- 
making of a fortnight ago at Boston and Springfield, — to take one as a gloss 
on the other, — Seward's Coke on Lincoln's Littleton, — and explain to me 
its other and truer meaning; and if there be one, or if, as sometimes happens, 
but not often, with an expert rhetorician like Mr. Seward, or a rough, plain- 
spoken man like Mr. Lincoln, there be no meaning at all in these phrases, 
I shall be most happy to admit I have done injustice. 

The sad conviction presses on me, that the animating spirit of the Re- 
publican party, however individuals may honestly disclaim it, is anti-slavery 
fanaticism, enthusiastic sentimentalism, founded on the false ethical principle 
that slavery, as it exists in this country is wrong, per se, and that under 
the obligation of the higher law, to which Mr. Seward lias pledged Mr. 
Lincoln, there can be no covenant or constitution, which binds us to protect 
it. Take away from the Republican organization the anti-slavery element, 
the sentiment which sways New England and the extreme Northwest, and 
it would be the merest shell that ever dignified itself with the name of party. 
Keep within it that spirit, active, energetic, honest, if you please; for, most 
fanaticism, from the days of John of Leyden, is honest, and you have it, as 
it is — a terrible, dangerous, aggressive antagonist, in whose grasp, such 
conventionalities as laws and constitutions, are crushed without a scruple. 

I am quite aware that this progress — this increasing indifference to the 
obligation to conventional duty on this point — to which I have referred, is 
claimed to be a proof of the triumph of a great moral process or principle. 
I question much if the intelligence of our countrymen is yet sublimated to 
this point; mine certainly is not; I still revere the authority of those who 
have gone before me; I still swear by the Constitution, as it is judicially 
construed, and I dread that social and political revolution, now so imminent, 
which is to inaugurate the new school of political obedience to a higher 
law than the Constitution, to which Mr. Seward has pledged Mr. Lincoln 
and his administration. 

I have said, gentlemen, that the aggressive spirit of Abolitionism, is not 
confinecf to New England and New York, but that it exists in its most acrid 
form, in the region where Mr. Lincoln lives, and which now, so unanimously 
sustains him. We are so much in the habit of worrying ourselves and 
occupying our minds with this vexed and prospective question of territorial 
sovereignty or subjection, that we forget other more dangerous anomalies — 
more pestilent difficulties. One occurs to me, which a recent outrage on the 
laws makes painfully impressive, though it, like the abolition burnings in 
Texas hardly yet suppressed, is lost sight of, so busy are we, with Douglas 
or Anti-Douglas, Lecompton or Anti-Lecorapton. I refer to the resistance 
— the successful resistance — to the fugitive slave law in the Northwest. 

This is not the place (though the topic is full of interest) to trace the 
course of lawlessness and defiance, which has characterized the conceded 



10 

Republican States, as to the law for the recapture of runaway negroes. 
The trouble began eighteen years ago, when a New England judge, by a 
dexterous device (for which his biographer claims credit) annulled all local 
auxiliary legislation on the subject. Before that, as I well remember, the 
recapture and surrender of fugitives as property was as simple and easy 
and tranquil a judicial act as the surrender of a fugitive from justice. The 
notion had not even germinated then that slaves could not be "property." 
They had been so considered from the beginning. As early as 1791, Wash- 
ington described them in so many words as " property," and exerted his 
whole official influence for their recapture as such, and this before any 
fugitive slave act was passed. Still earlier, in 1786, Washington lent his 
personal aid to recover for a friend a runaway; and in a letter now in ex- 
istence in this city, deplored the existence of combinations to defeat this 
very right of property which the sentimentalism of to-day considers such 
an abomination. " I have sent the negro boy," writes Washington to 3Ir. 
Drayton, "under the care of a trusty overseer, to be shipped to you (at 
Charleston). When he arrived at Baltimore it was necessary to commit 
him to jail for security. He has since escaped to Philadelphia." And 
then he adds: "The gentleman to whose care I sent him has promised 
every endeavour to apprehend him, but it is not easy to do this when there 
are numbers who would rather facilitate the escape of slaves than apprehend 
them when runaways." Washington, unlike Carl Shurz, did not think 
property in a slave " a wild and guilty phantasy." Since 1822 this notion 
of progressive humanity has grown till the wrong culminates in the Personal 
Liberty Bill of Massachusetts, an existing statute, of which every Republican 
approves, and in the successful defiance of the acts of Congress and the 
federal judiciary in Wisconsin, one of Mr. Lincoln's surest" States. For 
this, I don't mean to say or intimate that Mr. Lincoln is responsible, but 
when I remember that, at the Chicago Convention, Judge McLean was 
almost contemptuously thrust aside, as he had been in 1856, because he had 
vigorously sustained the Fugitive Slave Act, and Mr. Bates, in spite of Mr. 
G-reeley's indorsement, because he lived in a slave State : and Mr. Lincoln 
was nominated, as beyond these reproaches, we may be excused for fears 
and suspicions and distrust. 

The Wisconsin case, to which I have referred, is familiar to every lawyer, 
but perhaps not so generally known as it ought to be, and illustrates the 
revolutionary character of northwestern abolitionism. Without going into 
detail, it may be thus stated : A fugitive slave, one whose relation had 
been proved, and who had been, under the law, ordered to be given up 
to his master, was rescued from the marsjial by violence, and, I presume, 
fled to that region of safe refuge, Canada. The chief agent in this vio- 
lence was tried in the District Court of the United States, before a jury, 
convicted and sentenced, just as three negroes were a few months ago in 
this city. No sooner was this done, than the Supreme Court of Wisconsin 
issued a habeas corpus, brought up the prisoner, and set him at liberty. 
Nay, further, the court ordered the clerk not to make a record or exem- 
plification of the judgment, so as to defeat, as they thought, the revisory 
power of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was by mere accident 
that a record was obtained, and when the action of the State court was 
reversed at Washington, and the criminal put back in jail, we learn from 
the newspapers, that a mob lately rescued him and set him at liberty. He 
now defies the law. Now, my fellow-citizens, if this had been done in South 
Carolina, it would have been called Southern insolence and nullification, 
and perhaps treason, and yet, when it is done, boldly and defiantly done, by 
a free-soil court, our friends of the Republican party see no wrong in it, but 



11 

applaud it, as a righteous act of judicial independence — a recognition of 
what Governor Seward says is Mr. Lincoln's law, higher than a mere Con- 
stitution. The slave who was rescued, was as much his owner's property, 
as anything else he owned. So said the Supreme Court of the United States 
years and years ago. The man who, by violence, tried to get that slave 
away from his master's control, was accessory, if not principal, in a well- 
defined crime. The judgment of the court which sentenced him, was as 
valid as that which hangs a mail-robber or a pirate, or confiscates a bale 
of smuggled goods, or affirms a patent right. But according to the Re- 
publican code of morality, the end justifies the means, where slavery is 
concerned. Had the rescue been attended with murder, if the victim were 
the owner or marshal, it would have been justifiable in their eyes, and thus, 
by the fanaticism which is instilled into the Northern mind, at least that 
part of it which has reasoned itself into concurrence with these anti-slavery 
principles, all law is overthrown, property is wrested from its owner, and 
a plain^ provision of the Constitution is defied. And this, say what you 
please, is Republicanism. Judge Spalding, of Ohio, said truly: "No man 
is recognized as a Republican here, who will, for a moment, sustain this 
miserable law." And the history of the Wisconsin case of revolutionary 
resistance forms just now the staple of Republican literature, for it was but 
last week that through the post-office I received (as I dare say thousands 
like me did) one of what are called the Tribune Tracts, containing Mr. 
Lincoln's speech at the Cooper Institute, in which the Fugitive Slave Act 
is alluded to only in disparagement, and Senator Doolittle's defence of the 
Wisconsin outrage. 

^ How, after all this, any man in his senses can talk of Southern aggres- 
sion, is a mystery. How any man, with the consciousness that there is a 
great, well-organized combination, ramified over every Northern State, East 
and West, having for its object to facilitate the escape of slaves, can talk 
of the balance of practical wrong being against us, passes my limited com- 
prehension. Accumulate, if need be, all that the most extreme men of the 
South have ever said, or threatened, or demanded, and it bears no compari- 
son with this great practical, substantial, and increasing wrong. Ask the 
most^ or the least declamatory railer against the South, who is now mar- 
shalling the forces of Mr, Lincoln, to tell you what he means by Southern 
aggression, and he won't know what to say short of oflFensive generalities. 
Be more precise with him, if you please, and ask him what, in the seventy 
years of the Union, or the seven years of the war, or the ninety years of 
colonial relation, what wrong South Carolina ever did to Pennsylvania? 
The South has never stolen any of our property from us. It generally be- 
friends us. When the North or the Northwest tries to take away our poor 
little Mint or Naval Asylum, Southern men vote with us. In former days, 
Southern men, Cheves, and Lowndes, and Calhoun, and McDuffie, and 
Preston (all Carolinians), defended us and our interests. The earliest 
recollections of my life are of the praises of William Lowndes, of South 
Carolina, the most conservative, and temperate, and philosophical of states- 
men, who uttered that memorable precept, well w(#thy to be repeated, 
"that the Presidency was a post too high to be sought or to be refused;" 
and of William Drayton, also of South Carolina, who lived the end of his 
honoured life among us, and who, moderate Union man as he was, once said 
in the House of Representatives, that if it ever were seriously discussed 
whether the master has a right of property in his slave, no members could 
remain who represented the people of the States in which these are pos- 
sessed. Passing beyond mere local considerations, I ask the men of peace- 
ful industry to remember that more than once Southern statesmen have 



12 

saved us from war with one or the other of the great powers of Europe, — 
that the great Southern staple holds the world in tribute, and more than 
anything keeps the peace, — that assured peace is worth all the protection 
which legislative commercial restrictions promise ; and remembering all 
this, and bearing in mind what Northern fanaticism is doing — a vexatious, 
irritating, agitating fanaticism — all the time ; that Mr. Jjincoln is shaking 
his fist at the South, and telling them that no man is fit to be free, or 
shall be permitted to be free, who owns slaves ; that Mr. Seward is vent- 
ing his personal disappointment in blasts of fierce defiance, and Mr. 
Sumner is denouncing the usurpations of the Supreme Court ; I ask again, 
of the candid and fair-minded Northern man, what is meant by the wrongs 
the South has ever done to us. If it be said that the opposition of the 
South to a protective tariff, to internal improvements by the General Go- 
vernratnt, is a wrong to us, I have only to say, in reply, that the South 
has a right to its opinions on these questions of national economy,^ and 
does not enforce them by corruption, as Republican New England did in 
1857, but by reason and by votes, by persuasion and conviction. As to 
internal improvements, and especially a railway to the Pacific, I would rather 
see it deferred till the intervening States shall attain a growth to make it 
for themselves, than to have it made now by that great Northwestern route, 
the adoption of which is to galvanize the insolvent corporations wMch con- 
centre at Ch'icago, and to turn the commerce of the West exclusively into 
the lap of our commercial rival. Pennsylvania's true interests, if she only 
knew them, do not lie in that direction, but in the South and Southwest, 
from which Republicanism, and Lincolnism, and Abolitionism, if trium- 
phant, will forever divide us. 

What, then, in this crisis, when the North, the compact, fanatical North 
— for such in its anti-slavery organization it is from the northern boundary 
of this Commonwealth, eastward and westward — is thus advancing in its 
conscious and aggressive power, and the South suspicious — I do not like to 
say timorous, though the feeling may well be excused, with the danger 
before them and around them — but almost desperate ; what, then, I ask, is 
the duty, what the interest, what should be the attitude of Pennsylvania — 
this great State, that has never yet cast her controlling vote in favour of 
Abolitionism, or anything tainted with Abolitionism, but always with na- 
tional and Union men, and on the side of the Constitution ? Her vote now, 
if she will be true to her history and her great traditions, can save the nation 
and the Union. If she vote with the Northern candidate, Pennsylvania 
becomes, as one of your resolutions the other night said, the fag-end, or in 
more dignified phrase, the rear-guard of the great Abolition party, and is 
separated forever — for it is a step that cannot be retraced — from her natural 
allies of the South and Southwest. Yes, fellow-citizens, her natural allies 
of the South and South\Yest ; for I undertake to say that it can be demon- 
strated, aside from our vast and controlling interest in the prosperity of the 
Union as it is, that the bulk of the manufactured products of which we are 
so justly proud, and about which we are so properly solicitous, finds its 
market in the Soutlj, and especially the Southwest, or south of a parallel 
running due west. The best trade for our railways is of course the local 
trade, and next to it is that which comes from the southward and westward. 
In the '' North American," of last week, I find this statement, which, I 
doubt not, is true, quoted from a Western paper : — 

"Even with the advantage of your manufactures, New York sells to the West more of the 
kind of goods, if not of the very goods manufactured in Philadelphia, than does Philadel- 
phia itself. The whole teeming valley of the Mississippi is within the commercial grasp of 
Philadelphia, to take as much of its trade as it thinks fit, and yet how very little of it does 



13 



Philidelphia control. How few merchants are there in this valley, north of St. Lmis, who 
buy iSr goods at Philadelphia, or who regard it as a place where there is any prospect 
of being able to do any business." 

And all this, and more than this, is to be put in jeopardy for what? 
What substantial end is to be obtained— what material interest is to be pro- 
moted by casting the vote of Pennsylvania for Mr Lincoln and harnessing 
her to the car of New York, the Northeast, and West. To this question, 
put without offence, we have a right to have a candid and expicit answer- 
not declamation about Southern aggression and freedom m the territories, 
free homes for free men, and such claptrap, but a precise answer. 

What Pennsylvania or Philadelphia material interest will be promoted by 
Mr Lincoln's election ?— a candidate thus ''fathered and thus husbanded 
I can understand perfectly well why rival commercial interests may be. 
New England and the Northwest are quite content with things as they are. 
The fishing bounties will have a new lease of life, to which I do not at all 
object, and which I only refer to now as showing the snug, direct_ protection 
which our friends down East have had so long. That great job of New 
York, the Collins line of steamers, with its dark and bloody memories, its 
unexpiated sacrifices of human life-its Arctic and Pacific, and the hundreds 
of human beings engulphed and forgotten, and its stupendous subsidy, wil 
be revived Mr. 0. B. Matteson will resume his influence m Congress, but 
what, I again ask, will Pennsylvania or Philadelphia gain ? 

Our frTends will perhaps reply, a tariflf,— a protective tariflF,— such a 
stringent tariff as my excellent friend Mr. Carey desires; or a specific duty 
on Pennsylvania iron, and a little care for Pennsylvania coal. Now without 
in any way questioning or admitting the necessity or the expediency of a 
change in the tariff, I may be permitted to express some doubt as to the 
certainty of any change for the better under Mr. Lincoln s rule, and to hint 
the clear conviction, that so far as a change in the character of the duties 
affectincr our interests is concerned, Pennsylvania making by her vote, a 
Kentucky statesman President, will have a better chance than if she sur- 
renders to Lincoln and Sewardism. I have watched the game-the progress 
of the contest with great attention, and in all the array of States,^ which are 
claimed for Mr. Lincoln, not one hearty word, not a word of any kind, is ever 
said in favour of a tariff, except in Pennsylvania, or, to limit it more precisely 
in one part of Pennsylvania (for my impression is that in all that part ot 
our State, north and west, which in 1856 gave heavy votes to Mr_ Fremont, 
there is an ominous silence about a tariff). The New York Republican 
Hand-Book, though edited by a Pennsylvanian translated to New iork, 
while full of poisonous nonsense about slavery, has no word tor ^ tariff 
Perhaps the Republicans of New Jersey are in favour of a new tariff, but 
New England and New York, and the Northwest, are cold, and indifferent, 

^^No one who bestows attention to this tSpic can avoidbeing struck by the 
persistent indifference, if not hostility, to Pennsylvania interests. A re- 
markable illustration of it occurred last week. Mr. Charles F. Adam. 
Chairman of the Committee of Manufactures in the Republican House ot 
Representatives was brought here to address our citizens without distinction 
of party. He was expected to discuss questions relating to Pennsylvania and 
in order to clinch this a great protectionist leader and controversialist (Mr. 
Carey) presided, and introduced him. For hours did Mr. Adams discourse 
in the temper, I am glad to say, of a scholar and a gentleman, stringing as 
has been well said, brilliant rhetoric on the black thread of anti-slavery, 
and attributing all evil and abuse to the predominance of what it is the 
fashion to call the slave power. But not one single avord-literally 



14 

NOT ONE AS TO A TARIFF, OR PROTECTION, — OR SPECIFIC DUTIES, OR PENN- 
SYLVANIA INTERESTS, — and the next, day when the speech was reported, 
the leading organ of the tariff party here could not conceal its chagrin, say- 
inf, both in sorrow and in anger, that it was expected Mr. Adams would 
have said a great deal about protection, but that he had touched it very 
gently ! Very gently indeed. Mr. Adams did not ruffle the most acute 
sensibility of the most extreme free trader. He was true to Massachusetts 
and the "New York Evening Post," and he was honestly silent, for he 
could not conscientiously say a word of encouragement to Pennsylvania. 

Nay, further, when a few days ago the Republican Convention met at 
Syracuse, to nominate a governor and electoral ticket, the name of William 
C. Bryant, the free-soil, free-trade editor and poet, he, who so resolutely 
refused to discuss a tariff with Mr. Carey, was received as an elector at 
large, with vociferous and enthusiastic cheering, and the resolutions adopted 
began with one of ominous significance, considering the cold comfort given 
at Chicago to the Pennsylvania protectionists. You all remember the 
doubtful phrase, which the " Evening Post" said did not mean a tariff at 
all, which was adopted at Chicago. Out of sixteen propositions consti- 
tuting what was there determined to be the Republican platform, ten have 
direct reference to slavery, one to the homestead law, which is thought to 
have a kindred relation, one to internal improvements, one (known as the 
Dutch plank) to naturalization, one to a Pacific Railroad, which of course 
means the Platte River route, in which Pennsylvania has no interest and 
our rival States a great deal, and the following ambiguous, oracular one, as 
to protection, which was all poor Pennsylvania, though she had nominated 
Mr. Lincoln and defeated Mr. Seward, could obtain : — 

"12th. That while providing revenue for the support of the National Government by- 
duties upon imports [imposts?], sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imposts, 
as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country, and we 
commend [the word is a very gentle one] that policy of national exchanges (?) which 
secures to the working-man liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to manu- 
facturers and mechanics an adequate reward for their skill, labour, and enterprise, and to 
the nation commercial prosperity and independence." 

Now I aver, taking into view that the idea of protection to domestic in- 
dustry is a clear and precise one, requiring few wgrds and plain words, it never 
before was so enveloped in obscure generalities; and, so apparent was this — 
so palpably inadequate was this wordy rhetoric to the just demands of our 
Pennsylvania protectionists — that, when the Lincoln ratification meeting 
was held in this city, if my memory serves me, it was deemed absolutely 
necessary to invigorate this emasculation of tariff doctrine ; to put a gloss 
on it, which would make it suit Schuylkill and Centre and Alleghany coun- 
ties; and accordingly, Mr. Henry C Carey, the champion of protection, a 
gentleman to whose patriotic and conscientious convictions on this topic, I 
do willing justice, offered an amended series of resolutions, to put this mat- 
ter right. This, if I mistake not, was about the time he was defying Mr. 
Bryant, — the craven knight of free trade, — to mortal conflict in the news- 
papers. This being the state of the record, the great New York Convention 
meets, as I have said, at Syracuse, with enthusiasm, puts this same Mr. 
Bryant at the head of the Lincoln electoral ticket, and coolly and contemp- 
tuously tells the Pennsylvania protectionists, that they shall have no in- 
fluence, and must let the Chicago platform alone, and take it with all its 
obscurities. The Report reads thus : — 

"Hon. Benjamin Welsh, Jr., announced with pleasure, that the Committee on Resolu- 
tions had found no difficulty in agreeing, and had directed him unanimously to report the 
following : 

" Resolved, That this Convention, representing the Republican electors of the State of 



15 



New York, heartily accepts and adopts the Resolutions of the National Republican Con- 
vention hdd at Chicago, and that it has no disposition to alter one line or word of that 
masterly and patriotic declaration of principles." 

Who but Pennsylvania had asked to alter a line or word, and what 
does this mean but what I have already hinted at, that the Lincoln com- 
munities ; the whole array, which I can but describe as the free railroad 
iron States, New England, and New York, and Illinois, and Michigan and 
Wisconsin, and Iowa, and Minnesota, and the New York counties of Penn- 
svlvania, through which is now secretly running a foreign railroad, to steal 
the Ohio trade from us, means to use this great commonwealth as a beast ot 
burden, harnessed to the abolition, free-trade wagon of Abraham Lincoln and 
Hannibal Hamlin, and then to cheat her afterwards. Depend on it, it Penn- 
svlvania, vigilant of her interests, has to choose between two schools ot 
free trade, that which is candidly and manfully and honestly professed by 
the South, and that which is in masquerade in the North and Last her 
chance will be better with the first, for all the tariff she needs (especially it 
she earns confidence and gratitude by fidelity to the Constitution, the Union 
and the adjudicated rights of the South), than if led away from the path 
in which she has always walked; turned from the safe Democratic groove 
in which she has always moved; she trusts herself to that vast conglomera- 
tion of fanatical and mercenary communities, and bankrupt railroad corpo- 
rations-for such, almost without exception, are the Northern and North- 
western railroad companies— which at this moment constitute the great 

Lincoln army of the North. . , i, .1 i, . 

And now comes the question, what shall she do ? What^shall the honest 
yeomanry of Pennsylvania-what shall the business men of this great com- 
monwealth do in October and November next? Shall they vote for the 
anti-slavery candidate,— for such, without offence or dispute, Mr Lincoln 
may be said to be,— or for John C. Breckinridge, whom his enemies describe, 
and we are content to take, as the Southern or Southwestern candidate; 
for Andrew G. Curtin, Mr. Lincoln's deputy, of Centre County, or Henry 
D. Foster, a modest, able, patriotic man, against whom, to this time, no 
whisper of reproach has been levelled? „ ,. . .. , 

John C. Breckinridge— waiving for the present all objection, arising out 
of the pending canvass, which shall be hereafter fairly considered-stands 
before the people of this country as a man with singular qualities ot per- 
sonal popularity, especially in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 

There is, between them and Kentucky, a close sympathy, which, if it be but 
a sentiment, is one that has always existed. Henry Clay, and James Guthrie, 
and John C Breckinridge, have always had their most earnest friends here. 
It would seem as if there was a congeniality of temper. There is some- 
thing, too, in historical and geographical relations. The great ^^^r which 
washes the borders and receives the tributaries of Kentucky virtually has 
its source in Pennsylvania. From Western Pennsylvania the farmer, the 
manufacturer, even the lumberman, as he goes with his products to market, 
is at home in Kentucky, and its trade is almost a local trade for us. Judg- 
ine from commercial results, Kentucky seems to cling more closely and _at- 
fectionately to Pennsylvania, than she does to her own mother Virginia; 
and what man in Pennsylvania looks with alien eye on Kentucky, even 
though she be a Southern and slave-owning State? Mr. Breckenndge s fa- 
miliar relations are interwoven with us and with New Jersey. Ihe names ot 
those to whom he owes his being, of John Witherspoon and Samuel Stan- 
hope Smith, and whose great example he has never dishonoured, are house- 
hold words in our sister State, and adorn especially her great institution of 
learning, of which she is justly proud, and which sometimes seems to belong 



16 

in a measure to us, — so many Pennsylvanians having there been nurtured, — 
where were educated Madison, and Sergeant, and Gaston, and Dallas, and 
Frelinghuysen, and Ingersoll. 

These are what, of themselves, would make the Democratic candidate 
popular in the 3Iiddle States, but— individualizing the subject more closely 
— let any man study the career of Mr. Breckinridge himself, yet a young 
man, and the secret of his popularity is plainly revealed. Until called by 
the popular voice to the second ofl&ce of the nation, his career was that of 
the legislator merely, so far as political duties are involved, and it was dis- 
tinguished, from first to last, by the high-spirited, high-toned bearing, which, 
in a parliamentary body more than anywhere, makes its mark. There was 
no reserve in his opinions — no equivocation in his course. All was manly 
and straightforward, and patriotic. During the 3Iexican war, when a call 
was made for volunteers, John C. Breckinridge was among those who an- 
swered that appeal. He followed the flag of his country in its march of 
triumph, and when the war was over, returned to the pursuits of civil life, 
without restlessness or repining. 

And this is the man — this is the Kentucky statesman — he who for four 
years past has been the presiding officer of the great representative body of 
the sovereign States of the Union, of that body which especially represents 
the equality of the States ; this is the man whom it suits an unscrupulous 
partisan press to denounce as a sectionalist and a disunionist. I regret to 
be made to believe that this unjust accusation comes from a fragment of 
the Democratic party — not, I hope, from Judge Douglas, but from Judge 
Douglas's emissaries and organs. It may, from motives of policy, find a 
faint echo from the friends of Mr. Bell; but they know it is unjust. Re- 
publicans do not venture to hint it. Mr. Adams, the other night, expressly 
disavowed it. Now I ask, in all candour, what, in Mr. Breckinridge's 
antecedents, remote or immediate, is there to countenance such a suspicion ? 
Has he ever said a word, or done a deed, that looks like it? If he has, I 
ask for its production. Surely, his thinking that Congress cannot prohibit 
slavery in a territory, does not make him sectional. Judge Douglas and 
his school proclaim this, and Mr. Bell and Mr. Crittenden agree to it. Be- 
lieving the Missouri Compromise line to be unconstitutional or unwise, does 
not imply sectionalism; for so thought John M. Clayton, a Whig Secretary 
of State, and it was a Whig Senator from Kentucky who moved its repeal. 
To hold that, until a State government is organized, slavery, and all kindred 
subjects are beyond the interference of local legislation, is no crime, for 
Ihe Supreme Court has so decided it ; and it is only the wild radical or 
fanatic who does not recognize its authority. What, then, is it that gives 
colour to this, the only and the desperate charge made against Mr. Breck- 
inridge ? It is that the delegates who nominated him were from the 
Southern States mainly (not alone, for Pennsylvania then, as now, was 
with him), and that, in the calculation of chances. Southern electoral votes 
are counted on to elect him. 

It is no fault of Mr. Breckinridge or his friends that it is so. It would 
suit the Abolition leaders in the North very well indeed, to see a divided 
and distracted South, if they could manage, by the substantial agency of 
Mr. Douglas, or the mythical influence of another party, to divide the 
compact array of those States, whose property and very existence are threat- 
ened from without. I do not believe they can — but if they do — if the 
South is not true now to its friends in the North, it must depend on itself 
hereafter. If this could be accomplished, all would be well, and there 
would be no need of further defamation or disparagement. But when the 
South, baited and besieged, retires within itself, proclaims its defensive 



17 

principles, and then, instead of taking one of its own men — I mean taking 
a man from what is called the extreme South — advances to the Northern 
frontier, and selects as its Presidential candidate a Kentucky statesman 
(Kentucky being in point of fact a Middle State), is it not the rankest in- 
justice to say, that a candidate so chosen and so sustained, is sectional? 
I wonder at the shameless effrontery which can say it, or the stupid credu- 
lity which adopts it. It is conceded that Mr. Breckinridge cannot be elected 
without the vote of Pennsylvania or New York and New Jersey, and it is 
as clear an assumption, that neither State can be carried for any man who 
threatens or doubts the stability of the Union. I, and thousands like me, 
claiming to act with and under the Democratic organization of the Middle 
States, support and ask you to support Mr. Breckinridge, because we know 
him to be national, and believing he will carry every Southern and South- 
western State, we think every social, political, and material interest that 
Pennsylvania has at stake, will be incalculably promoted by his success. 

One thing more and I have done, for I am quite aware I have trespassed 
too much on you, but I desire to do an act of justice. I have heard another 
objection to Mr. Breckinridge. It is in the mouths of factious and disap- 
pointed men, and in the torrent of bitter injustice which is foaming 
around us it is sometimes assumed to be true, and its justice is conceded by 
those who should know better. It is said Mr. Breckinridge is the adminis- 
tration — the President's candidate, and as it is the fashion always to de- 
fame and abuse an outgoing administration — a President whose patronage 
is exhausted, this of course is thought a grievous stigma. In the tirst place 
the fact is not so. He is no more the candidate of this administration than 
he was of the last — no more Mr. Buchanan's than General Pierce's. 
Before the nomination, or the Convention at Charleston and Baltimore, 
neither the President, nor any member of his cabinet, that 1 am aware 
of, ever uttered one word in favour of Mr. Breckinridge. Nor did his 
office-holders, who are supposed, whether rightly or wrongly I don't 
care to inquire, to take their colour from the tree on which they teed. I 
incline very much to think they were the other way. This I well know, 
that there never was a more fatal mistake committed than by the Beading 
Convention in failing to nominate (as it could have done), and to instruct 
our delegates to support as a unit Mr. Breckinridge. Had this been done, 
as some of us desired, there would have been no division in the Democratic 
ranks, and John C. Breckinridge would have been the nominee of a united 
and triumphant party. Why it was not done, I do not care to inquire. 

When, however, the action of the Convention was determined, and the 
two candidates, Mr. Breckinridge and Mr. Douglas, were placed before the 
nation, the President — like any other citizen — the President's friends, like 
all others in or out of office, had a right to make a choice, and to express a 
preference. They have done so, and they do so now, and they rest that 
preference on a principle. They predicate of Mr. Breckinridge's adminis- 
tration a faithful adherence to a great constitutional principle of equality of 
rights to citizens of all the States in the common territories, to be divested 
neither by Congress nor the creation of a Congress — a territorial legisla- 
ture — and so thinking, they sustain him. To this extent only is Mr. 
Breckinridge connected with or supported by the President. 

But I do not choose — it would be rank injustice if I did — to put this 
on so narrow a ground. The confidence and support of a statesman so 
well-trained, of so large experience, and thorough familiarity with the 
working of the great machine of our constitutional system, are not to be 
disclaimed ; and Mr. Breckinridge may well be proud of possessing 
them. No one better knows the executive responsibility, and the tax 



18 

on physical and intellectual energy which the chief magistracy of the 
country imposes. No one can have been at Washington, and had a chance 
of watching the load of care and labour resting on one man, and how 
it is borne, without feeling the gross injustice of the disparagement of 
which the President has been and is the object. I have had some oppor- 
tunities of observation, having been to a certain extent connected with 
the Government; and I should think myself faithless to every obligation of 
gratitude and justice, if I did not bear my testimony, be it worth much or 
little, in his support. He has been my friend; and if any one present or 
absent thinks what I say of no value, merely because I have received honours 
and confidence at Mr. Buchanan's hands, I am very sure that no one will 
think the worse of me as a gentleman and man of honour for choosing to be 
grateful. Let me refer for an instant to what has been done in our foreign 
policy, which accidentally has most attracted my attention, and seems to be 
entirely lost sight of by the scavengers who are engaged in raking up in all 
the alleys and byways materials of defamation. So busy are we in devour- 
ing with morbid greediness Covode reports, and such wretched trash, that 
we hardly pause to reflect that, through his temperate and most circumspect 
policy, Mr. Buchanan has given to this country four years of absolute and 
assured peace with foreign nations. Among the prejudices invoked to 
defeat his election in 1856 was the Ostend manifesto, which, his enemies 
said, pledged him to a restless and aggressive policy all over the world. 

When General Cass was chosen Secretary of State, a war or some sort of 
difficulty with Great Britain was foretold as certain. Instead of which, there 
has been absolute repose. Each of the three preceding administrations had 
its irritations : Mr. Clayton quarrelled with a French Minister; Mr. Marcy 
dismissed an English one; Mr. Webster had sharp controversy with Austria; 
and Mr. Everett had somthing like a squabble with a Central American one. 
Since Mr. Cass has had charge of the Department there has been trouble nowhere. 
Surely, for this some credit is due to the President and his administration. 
Be it remembered, too, that, at the beginning, the state of things, especially 
between the United States and Great Britain, could not be said to be pro- 
pitious. That parent of perplexity, the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty — the com- 
pact by which two clever men thought each had overreached the other, and 
which no two men, representing each party, have been able to construe alike 
since — was in the path ; Central America was more perplexed than ever. 
A new treaty with reference to it had been made in London, which the Pre- 
sident did not approve, but which, in justice to the negotiators, and espe- 
cially to Great Britain, which might have misunderstood his action, he sub- 
mitted to the Senate. The Senate amended, and the British Ministry 
rejected it, and it lay in its obstructive fragments on top of the Clayton- 
Bulwer bargain. This was still unpropitious. The courteous and friendly 
temper of the President, aided perhaps by a change of Ministry in Eng- 
land, was keeping the atmosphere tranquil, when the public was startled by 
the news that the English cruisers had renewed in a most offensive form the 
belligerent right of search. It was an anxious moment. It was, I think, 
in the recess of Congress. The President sent all the available naval force 
into the West India seas, with orders to resist. The danger, thanks to the 
good sense prevalent all round, passed away. Again, Great Britain and France 
solicited the Government to unite in their quasi war with China. Mr. Bu- 
chanan refused ; and, without dwelling on it here, I need only remind you 
of the rich reward we have had, in continuing peace in the East as well as 
the West. When the San Juan affair occurred, what could have been more 
considerate and statesmanlike than the conduct of the President? He 
thought the military officer wrong, and disavowed him, with as little hesi- 



19 



tancy as when, with different objects, he had sent the navy to the Gulf, when 
he knew we w re right. The employment of General Scott was an act which 
commanded approv^al everywhere. In all things Mr Buchanan's foreign 
poScThas been that of peace and conciliation. He has repressed fihbus- 
S with a strong hand He has done more to suppress the foreign slave- 
de th n all who'have gone before him • and if his -got-tions with Hex 
ico and Spain have failed, it has been through no fault of his. Had the 
Renublican minority in the Senate consented to the Mexican Treaty, we 
Sd at le^st have had a better chance of pacification in that afflicted 
na ion than now when Old Spain seems to be clutching at her colonies 
again and everything in our close neighbourhood is confusion and blood^bed- 
The Spani h Treaty'was rejected under a false pretext, that it absolutely 
recoRXed a claim for the Amistad negroes, when in fact there was no such 
recolni ioVbut a reference of it, with other questions to a ribunal for ad- 
ludSon ' It was the President's treaty, and there ore it was rejected. 
Coughout, Mr. Buchanan's policy-and to this I challenge contradiction- 
has been that of dignity, of judicions energy and peace. 

I am quite awarf that I expose myself to a sneer, in passing by, as I am 
compelled to do, his domestic policy. When I left America in the summer 
of^857 the Kansas excitement was in full fury, and a civil war, as seemed 
to be conceded on all sides, imminent. I returned after an absence of less 
than two years, and I found that excitement existing merely on the page 
of hisTor/ and kept in recollection only to gratify party animosity. The 
?all of th^e year which witnessed Mr. Buchanan's inauguration was rnemo- 
rablefomLreat financial and commercial crisis, for which he certainly 
was not responsible. In that crisis the credit of the Government stood firm. 
There are those who can remember other and less severe commercial conyul- 
sion. when the credit of the Government fell with private credit As lately 
as 1841 the public loans, which never for a moment within three years 
have been damaged, were Spurned by every great and every petty banking- 
house in Europe And now, these four years of alleged misrule over-now, 
when he scars of private distress and shattered individual credit, though 
fresh are heal n., no honest man who looks over the wide expanse of our 
country its unive sal contentment, its recuperating energies, which are suffi- 
ci°ent to neutralize the false economy of States and the ruinous working of a 
svst m of nflated credit, will venture to say that all this is in spite of mis- 
rvernm nt or be unwilling, unless blinded by excess of party animosity 
rie one share of praise to the Chief Magistrate, the f/-g d-^?, ^ 
whose trust are thus prosperous. So much I have felt bound to say. The 
"me is not dLant when' all the irritations of the hour past, history will 

'°I ha"ve"detaiied you too long. Mine are the first words from Pennsyl- 
vania hp^t^^aThavI been spoken for John C. B-ckinn ge. J ey have no 
been inconsiderately uttered. They are probably my last ; foi i must leave 
to others the active conduct of this campaign, willing to be a private soldier 
n ?he rLks I shall have my full reward, if what I have uttered to-night 
han not be in vain. They ai4 meant to embody the latent and - e^^^ 
of this community— to inspire energy— to repress discord— to conciliate 
to gW oTnTnd Lbstance to that national sentiment which nowhere has 
mofe force than in Pennsylvania. What I have said has been earnestly 
said. I hope it has given pain to no one. 



APPENDIX. \^-^ 



The case of rescue of a prisoner convicted by the United States autho- 
rities, is that of Booth, reported in 21 Howard. The "National Intelli- 
gencer," of to-day contains the following intelligence, extracted from a 
Wisconsin paper : — 

" The Milwaukee 'News of the West,' of the 29th ultimo, gives an account 
of the second attempt of the United States Marshal to arrest Sherman M. 
Booth, who recently escaped from confinement inflicted for aiding in the 
rescue of a fugitive slave. Mr. McCarty, the United States Marshal, with 
six men, went to the house of Mr. Pickett, where he supposed Booth had 
been secreted. Pickett's house was surrounded by the officers, and Pickett, 
as soon as he saw the officer, attempted to strike him. Mr. 3IcCarty then 
asked him if Booth was secreted in his house, and informed him that he 
had a warrant for his arrest. Pickett replied that he had been there, but 
had gone away. At this time Pickett shouted ' Help, for God's sake I' 
when a terrible commotion began to be heard in the house, and thirteen 
other men, armed with guns, pistols, and pitchforks, came from the interior 
of the dwelling, and surrounded the officers, threatening their lives if they 
did not leave tbe premises. These demonstrations aroused the suspicions of 
the officers, who 'now began to doubt the truth of Pickett's assertion, that 
Booth had left the house. 

''They were proceeding to search the house, when Pickett desired that he 
might be permitted to put on some more clothing; and, upon being released, 
seized a horn hanging near, and gave one blast upon it. It was immediately 
taken from him, but was answered in a dozen different directions, and men 
were seen coming from all quarters, armed with guns and pitchforks. They 
immediately added themselves to the force already collected, and commenced 
threatening the lives of the officers, and aiming their guns at their breasts. 
Very soon after, armed men began to arrive in wagons; and, in the short 
space of one hour and a half, sixty-two men had gathered together, thus out- 
numbering the officers nearly twelve to one. Some twenty-five men ranged 
themselves in order, and, pointing their guns at 3IcCarty and his men, ordered 
them to leave. One of them had his gun cocked, and became so much excited 
that he discharged it, the ball entering a barn near. 

" The mob then demanded of McCarty what he intended to do ? He boldly 
and emphatically replied, that 'he came there to take Booth, and that if he 
could get sight of him, he should accomplish his purpose, or die in the attempt. 
That the men who were with him were determined men, and if violence was 
offered, it must be done at their peril.' Mr. McCarty then asked them their 
purpose. They replied that Booth should never be taken, except over their 
bodies; that tli^y defied the Government, and that no power on earth could 
get him from them. Again they demanded that the Marshal should depart, 
but he coolly informed them that he was not yet ready, and asked their names. 
A large number immediately stepped up and gave them, together with their 
places of residence, coupled with the assertions that they would 'Ij/nch, shoot, 
and quarter' every Government officer who attempted to accomplish Booth's 
arrest. 

" McCarty did not deem it advisable to risk the lives of six, against twelve 
times that number, and, not knowing that Booth was in the house, did not 
desire to peril their lives against such fearful odds, or render himself liable 
if the fugitive was not there secreted. He sent to Eipon for reinforcements, 
but informed the crowd that if Booth was seen or they would admit his 
whereabouts, he would take him or perish. He waited until eleven o'clock, 
having been there in the face of loaded rifles and desperate men, some seven 
hour-s, when, assistance not arriving, himself and men quietly departed." 
Philadelphia, September 4th. 



